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“I know you’ve had a crush on me since you were a kid—”
“Nine,” she inserted.
“Since you were nine,” he amended with a small smile.
“If you knew then why didn't you say anything?”
“Why didn't you say anything?” he shot back.
Stumped, she had nothing to say to that.
She didn't know why she’d never confessed her feelings to Brian.
At first, it was because she was too young and he was so much older, but then once they’d both gotten older, she still hadn't been able to bring herself to tell him.
Sensing that she didn't have an answer, Brian continued, “When Paige and Elias first adopted you, you were just this little kid, you were like another little cousin. When you were fifteen and I was twenty-one, it was too big an age gap. I was an adult and I still saw you as a kid. You were a friend, I loved spending time with you, but back then the six years was too big a gap, and while I knew you liked me, I didn't reciprocate those feelings.”
Although she knew he wasn't finished speaking, she couldn’t help but tense at his words.
She’d known that.
At fifteen a relationship with a twenty-one-year-old pre-med college student wouldn’t have been appropriate, but it still hurt to know that he hadn't felt the same way about her as she had about him.
“The other day when I heard that you had been attacked on the job everything changed. I realized that you weren't a kid anymore, you were a woman, a beautiful woman. I knew that I liked you, I knew that I was attracted to you, but I thought that was it. But watching you these last few days, how you’ve dealt with everything, I’m not just attracted to you. I’m falling for you. Fast.”
Hayley just stared.
For so long she had wanted to hear him say those words, but now that he had said them it felt surreal.
She didn't want to believe it because she was afraid of getting her hopes up too high and then having them dashed.
She didn't think that Brian really understood the depth of her feelings. She hadn't ever really dated because she had been in love with Brian since her teens. But it wasn't that way for him, he’d dated a lot over the years, and she knew a lot of those relationships had been serious. His feelings for her were new and no doubt fueled by the drama and high stakes of the last few days.
If they weren't in the same place, then she didn't want to date Brian because if it didn't work out, she could lose someone she had loved since she was a kid.
“Brian,” she started. She had to explain to him just how much she loved him.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“Don’t have to what?” she asked, confused.
“I get it. I know what you feel.” He lifted a hand and placed it on her chest, right over her heart. Butterflies immediately made themselves known in her stomach. “You love me. I'm sorry I didn't realize that sooner. But I know it now, and you don’t have to worry that I don’t understand or that what I feel isn’t real. It’s real.” He gave a chuckle. “It’s way real. Here.” One of his hands was still over her heart, and with his other, he picked up one of her hands and pressed it to his chest. “Feel it. Feel what's in my heart.”
Her hand warmed.
Her brain wanted to tell her it was simply because of his body heat, but her heart said something else.
Her heart said that the warmth was his feelings for her.
Hayley wanted to believe her heart, but she was a woman who lived in her head and not with her heart. She thought things through, she was sensible and smart, and always making lists to weigh out the pros and cons of each decision she had to make so that she could make a logical and informed choice.
She didn't let her emotions control her, maybe because as a child she had been overly emotional, crying over the smallest of things and clinging to her older sisters because the man who called himself her father terrified her. She had tried so hard to get a grip on her over sensitivity, but maybe she had gone too far. Maybe she had let her head override her heart, and that was why she hadn't told Brian how she felt about him. If she did and he turned her down then she was afraid that over-emotionalness would come back and her heart would be shattered into a million pieces.
But standing here, with Brian’s hand over her heart and hers over his, somehow, she felt like everything would be okay.
Somehow, she just knew that Brian would never hurt her.
They were friends. He’d been there all throughout her childhood—the good part of it anyway—they’d spent vacations and holidays, and just regular rainy weekends together. They knew each other, what they liked and disliked, they knew they had fun together, they knew they made each other laugh, and built each other up.
